When Netflix launched Narcos last year, the series that dramatized the rise to power of Pablo Escobar and his Colombian cocaine cartel, they had a bona fide hit on their hands. That success was due to one of the most amazingly true organized crime sagas of our times and in no small part to the show’s star, Wagner Moura. Moura had worked in film, television and theater in his native Brazil and acted in numerous telenovelas, a wildly popular genre in his home country. He gained worldwide notoriety after playing Captain Roberto Nascimento in José Padilha’s police drama Elite Squad. For the role of the Colombian drug kingpin the 40-year old Brazilian spent months in full immersion to learn Spanish. Moura is also set to direct an upcoming movie in Brazil and advocates for the ILO, the labor organization of the United Nations. He now reprises that role in the second and last season of Narcos. The HFPA’s Gabriel Lerman asked him about it.